


salvage

by hongmunmu



Category: One Piece
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Mental Health Issues, One Shot, POV Multiple, The Going Merry, Usopp-centric (One Piece), post-Water 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24175957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hongmunmu/pseuds/hongmunmu
Summary: Franky offered Usopp a place in his family. Leaving Water 7 on the Thousand Sunny, Usopp considers who he is, why he left, and why he's there now.( character-focused series of snippets set in water7/enies lobby and in the aftermath, loosely strung together, focusing on franky and usopp's relationship )
Relationships: Franky & Usopp (One Piece), Usopp & Vinsmoke Sanji, Usopp/Vinsmoke Sanji
Comments: 29
Kudos: 155





	salvage

**Author's Note:**

> i think a lot about how franky tried to adopt usopp into the franky family and the significance of that moment + how usopp is pretty much the catalyst for all of franky's development that follows their first meeting and their relationship is rly important and interesting to me, i think emotionally speaking they saved each other from themselves and i feel like ppl don't talk about that enough. also if i'm honest i wasn't happy with how the ending of the w7/enies lobby saga treated usopp, so i guess i wanted to write something that had a little more emotional insight/closure for him and what he went through mentally during that arc

“Become my subordinate. I like you.”

Usopp scoffs, frowning indignantly as he continues to hammer. “No way. I’m still a pirate.”

“Kid with no weapons, no crew and no boat doesn’t strike me as much of a pirate, bro. No offence.”

“Some taken.” Usopp scowls at him. “What, a big tough guy like you wants a weakling in your gang?” His voice takes on a pointed tone. "You said it yourself, I was holding my crew back. You're just— talking shit." 

Franky looks at him impassively, and shrugs, a more serious expression crossing his face. “Yeah, well, that's between you and your crew. There’s plenty of weaklings in the Franky Family. Strength ain't an issue when you’ve got numbers, and people who can keep you safe.”

“ _Safe?!_ Your guys nearly _killed_ me!”

“Hey, I feel really bad about that! I was gonna tell them off!”

“ _You_ told them to do it!”

“Yeah, well...” Franky trails off, then winks and does a ridiculous little pose; Kiwi and Mozu, ever the wingmen, quickly follow suit. Usopp just groans in aggravation, turning back to his work, and the sound of his hammer hitting Merry's side returns, echoing around the secret dock like pin drops.

It would be funny, if it wasn't so sad. Franky has undone Usopp's work twice now, breaking off his meagre repairs and throwing them aside like kicking over a kid's sandcastle, and every single time, Usopp just gets back to his feet and starts fixing her again like clockwork. Like one of those round-based weighted dolls that couldn't be knocked over no matter how hard you hit them. It's frustrating. Franky watches in silence. 

“That boat’s not sailing again, kid.”

Usopp's only response is the sound of the hammer hitting a nail. 

"You listenin' to me? She's done for. You're just mending scrap."

Still silence. Usopp's hands are shaking too much to be steady, and there's an ill thud as the hammer misses its mark and slams into Usopp's finger. He stifles a cry, winces and sucks in a breath, doubled over. Quiet a moment. Then the banging resumes. 

"Are you dumb, or something? I said—" 

“You just don’t get it. She’s _alive._ ” Usopp pauses, bunching his bandaged hands in his overalls. “She's... she has a soul. All right? I don't care how it sounds. I don't _care_ if she's dying. I can’t abandon her.”

“Okay, don’t.” Usopp’s head turns in surprise; Franky continues. “Take her to the shipyard, and we’ll make her into something new. A bike, a shed, a cart... we could attach her bowsprit to the front of the Franky House. Lots of my guys did that with things of theirs, to make it their home too. Well, they _did,_ until your buddies blew it up...”

“We’re not beheading Merry for your gross Frankenstein house—” Usopp starts, then stops. He stares at Franky for a moment, the kneejerk hostility draining from his face as he processes what Franky's saying. “You... really want me to join?”

Franky shrugs again, smiling. “I said it before; I like you. You’ve got guts. You don’t give up. You fight battles you can’t win ‘cause you think it’s the right thing to do. That’s cool. And strikes me, you’ve got nowhere to go.”

Usopp scowls, glancing back to Merry. “Rock bottom isn’t exactly something to be proud of,” he mutters, more to himself than to Franky.

“Yeah, well. Only place to go from there’s up.” 

* * *

Sanji is scary when he’s mad, and the sea train isn’t exactly blessed with space should things get any more explosive than they are already, but Franky looks like his chin’s about to get another dent in it and Usopp isn’t too keen on seeing that happen, so he wriggles between them. The sack tied around his neck makes him feel like a bit like a caterpillar, but now is no time for pride; especially not when Sanji’s defending Usopp after everything he’s done. 

“Sanji, a lot’s happened since then! And to tell the truth, I’m actually... he said I could join his family, and—”

“You _what?!"_ Sanji looks at Franky, looking ready to burst a vein, then back to Usopp. “Join his _family?_ Usopp, look at your body, idiot! You wanna hang out with the guy who did that to you?”

“Like I said, a lot’s happened—”

Ignoring Usopp’s protests, Sanji rounds on Franky, very deliberately ashing his cigarette on him. “First you give him some kind of brain damage, then you try to adopt him?! This is how you get people to like you, huh?”

“Hey, man, I’m only being honest with him. You guys are the ones who left him with nowhere to go.”

“We didn’t leave him, he _left!_ “ 

“Then it’s none of ya business, is it?” Franky fires back, pulling a face. “Dumb _ass_.”

“It _is_ my business, since clearly he’s too concussed to _think_ straight—”

“Hey! I am _here_ , y’know!”

They ignore him. Franky cracks his neck side to side, subtly reasserting his huge physical advantage on Sanji, should the latter’s anger escalate into something more serious. It’s declawed a little by the fact that Franky is still restrained inside a sack, but apparently that doesn’t bother him.

“Strikes me, he left your crew ‘cause he was scared he’d get left behind, just like your ship. Franky Family’s got plenty room for weaklings, and we look after our own. So it sounds like a you problem, pal.”

“He won’t get— look, who even _are_ you?! Get your big metal nose outta this, it’s nothing to do with you, asshole! You’re the bad guy here!”

“Ain’t my fault the Franky Family is _super_ appealing and _super_ at protecting its members!”

“Would you both shut up?!” Usopp yells, barging between them. “Quit putting words in my mouth! I can talk for myself!”

Sanji sighs, rubbing his temples. “Usopp, you’re upset, I get it. But this guy is—”

“Dangerous?” Usopp challenges, defiant. “We’re all dangerous! We’re pirates!”

“Usopp, look what he _did_ to you!”

“I fought Luffy, too, and he’s still—” Usopp catches himself, his pride stopping the word before it can come. “Luffy was... nakama. I left you behind, too, and you’re still here, trying to protect me. We’ve all— hurt each other.” Usopp looks at the floor, embarrassed, trying not to show it. He doesn't normally talk for this long. “Franky understood me about Merry, Sanji. What I saw in Skypeia — it _was_ real. A… uh… klauterman.”

“Klabautermann,” Franky corrects helpfully. Usopp gives him a grateful look, while Sanji shoots a glare.

“Merry is done for. I know that now. But Franky understood how I felt when no one else did, and I… look, we have a clean slate. Franky isn’t our— your enemy. We’re all fighting against the government, so can you _please_ just— for Robin’s sake, if not for me— try to work together?!” 

Silence for a moment. Then a wail.

“Aw, man,” Franky whines. “That was so powerful. I hope you guys make up, man, I really do. That friendship is—”

“Shut _up,_ ” Sanji interjects. He still aims a half-hearted kick at Franky, but Usopp knows Sanji’s kicks, and it’s not as hostile as it was before. So he’s smiling, once he puts the mask on.

* * *

Usopp doesn’t join the Franky Family, as it happens, because the Franky Family — at least officially — ceases to exist. But the offer still hangs heavy in Usopp’s mind, swinging like a pendulum, stirring his thoughts whenever he thinks they’ve finally calmed down. Less the question, rather, but its answer. 

Usopp likes — hopes — to think of himself as a loyal person, despite recent evidence that would say otherwise. That flighty, weak and emotional as he may be, when it comes down to it, he can do what needs to be done. He can stay strong. He can be depended on. It’s what he hopes for himself, anyway. It’s what his mother wanted him to be.

But there was a moment, back then in the secret dock, where he’d hesitated. Just for a second. A moment where he’d considered a possibility of being someone other than a pirate, someone other than the Straw-Hat’s sniper; a possibility of betraying his lifelong dream. Because it occurred to him there, when Franky offered him a new home, that there was a world outside of the one he had grown up visualising; a world of small, boring, peaceful places where Usopp was alone and miserable, and a violent, exciting fairy-tale world of pirates, where somewhere on the horizon, his father was waiting for him. It had occurred to him, the thought mounting in his mind ever since he arrived in Water 7, that perhaps he wasn’t meant to be a pirate — because dreams were all well and good, but Usopp had sailed the sea with pirates, and with every adventure they had, he left feeling weaker. Heavier. More out of place. He watched his friends shine like diamonds and save countries, save each-other, save _him,_ time and time again; all the time growing stronger and brighter and more capable. Luffy had fought God; who else could say that? _I knew a man who fought God and won. I knew a woman who sailed a ship into the sky._

Usopp stagnated. He didn’t get stronger. He had no powers, no real role. Merry was all he’d brought to the crew, and he couldn’t even keep her whole and safe, no matter how hard he’d tried. 

It was as though the world was screaming at him that he wasn’t a pirate. He’d never be a pirate. He was ordinary, average, and possessed mediocre skill at many things, with nothing he truly excelled at. These things had followed him in his peripheral vision like floaters, never there long enough for him to really address them, until he had arrived in Water 7. There, forty guys in stupid outfits had spelled it out for him, and Franky had punctuated it and driven it home with a solid hit to the jaw. You-are-not-a-pirate.

And yet. Since he’d taken out his fear on the crew, since he’d left alone with only a dying ship to keep him company, he’d had time to think. More than enough time. Because even as Usopp dragged planks of wood heavier than he was through the narrow streets with bandaged hands, and tried to mend Merry with tools that were also starting to fall apart, knowing all the while that there wasn’t a chance of saving her, he’d thought, over and over again: _if only I was better at this. If only I had been better from the start._ Maybe if he’d spent his days at home learning a trade, instead of being a delinquent in the hope it would please his absent father, maybe then he could have saved Merry. Maybe he could have really become a pirate, if he hadn’t wasted his time wishing so badly to be one.

And Franky built ships. Broke them, yes. Decreed them unfit for sailing and tore them to shreds. But built them too.

So, in the secret dock, Usopp had wondered about being someone else. He had wondered about letting go. Of Merry, of his friends, of his dream, of home. Of everything. 

He had spurned the chance when it was offered, yes, and now that opportunity was gone. But if he hadn’t, if it wasn’t. The what-ifs are what scare him. 

It’s strange how Usopp has seen cities in the clouds, and yet it had taken a stranger who beat him black and blue to make him see that he still had a chance to be something.

* * *

Franky doesn’t leave the workshop much, despite how raucous his arrival had been. The Straw-Hats had seen his worth at his core and taken him in, but on a surface level they were still mostly strangers, and Franky has never really left home before. He misses his family, he misses his sisters, and if he’s honest, he misses being in charge. Franky hasn’t been an alien like this in a very, very long time, and in the old days when he felt confused or hurt or miserable, he would break things. He had remade himself into a breaker. But Water 7 was on the horizon now and breakage wasn’t an option any more, so: he built. He hid in his workshop, the spiritual successor to the Franky House, and he built. 

There’s another shadow on the ship, though, who seems to have the same idea, and it’s jacking his style. 

“That’s the third time today that you’ve hovered out there,” he says loudly. “Make up your mind, bro, are you comin’ in or are you leavin’?” 

There’s a little squeak of surprise from outside the workshop, a moment of silence, and then slowly, the door creaks open.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” Usopp mumbles sheepishly as he comes in, quietly closing the door behind him. Franky waves a hand, not turning around. 

Neither of them speak for a little while; the workshop’s quiet other than the sounds of Franky working, clinks of metal and machinery whirrs. Faintly, there’s the sound of Luffy and Chopper making noise above deck, one presumably chasing the other. 

“Um,” Usopp says eventually, shuffling further into the workshop about as naturally as a corpse walking into a restaurant. “What’re you doing?”

“Makin’ some replacement parts,” Franky says, inspecting his handiwork and blowing some dust out of a cranny. He pats one of his large mechanical forearms. “These babies don’t replace themselves.” 

“Cool,” Usopp says, then hesitates for a moment like he’s about to say something. “Is, um… is it okay if I watch for a bit?” 

“Sure, bro. _Mi casa es su casa_.”

“Thanks.” Usopp gingerly takes a seat on the floor a little to the left of Franky, hugging his knees to his chest with his back against the wall. Weird that he didn’t go for the couch, which Franky had forked out for, but whatever. 

“There a reason you’ve been hoverin’ like a ghost around here instead of enjoying the sun with your friends?” Franky asks, jerking his head toward the ceiling. “I worked super hard on that lawn, y’know.”

“Uh, yeah, I just… sorry.” Usopp fumbles for the words. Franky doesn’t interrupt; he’s in no rush. He tightens a screw while the kid talks. “Just… had some stuff on my mind, I guess.”

“Still feels weird, huh.”

“Yeah.” A nervous laugh. “Just don’t know where I stand.” 

“Thought you guys made up. Looked that way from where I was standin’, at least.”

“No, we did, but…” He trails off. Franky glances at him, and quickly wishes he hadn’t; the bandages from before are still glaringly obvious. There’s some new ones, too, since he’s actually seen the doctor properly now, but it still leaves an ill feeling in Franky’s gut. Years of old guilt, all rearing their head at the sight, reminding him that they weren’t going away. Usopp twists his shirt in his hands idly, deep in thought. Franky looks away.

“I’ve just been thinking if—” Usopp says at last, then stops. He’s like a sputtering machine. “About what I would’ve done. If things hadn’t gone this way.”

Franky squints at the new chain launcher, lifting it up for better light. “Not following you, bro.”

“About what you said to me, y’know. Before.”

“Hey, hey,” Franky says quickly, the guilt rushing to the surface. “Now, I didn’t mean any of that stuff, so I don’t want you thinking about—”

“No, no, not that.” Usopp shakes his head vehemently. He definitely has been, but Franky figures he’ll pick that bone later. “In the dock. About your family.”

“Heh, you having second thoughts? Little late for that now, bro.” 

“Well, that’s just it.” Usopp sighs, sinking his knees down flat to the floor and rolling his feet in and out idly. “It’s just that— I thought about it. About not being a pirate.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like, if… if I really left. And I didn’t hate it.”

“So?” 

“...So?”

“Yeah. So, you thought about doing something else. So what?”

“Well—”

Franky chortles. “Don’t tell me you’re havin’ a dilemma about being a pirate just ‘cause you thought about not being a pirate.”

Usopp pauses awkwardly, then pulls a face. “Well, of course it sounds stupid when you put it like _that_.” 

“It’d sound stupid if I put it on a plate and served it with ketchup, little bro.”

Usopp sighs and hunches his shoulders, shrinking into himself like a turtle. “Yeah, well. It just seems like… no one else has any doubts.”

Franky puts down his work to stare at Usopp, incredulous. “You saw how they recruited me, right?”

“Okay, well, apart from you.” 

Franky snorts, and shrugs. “Eh. So you’re a doubter. Who cares? Every good gang needs a doubter. Keeps ‘em in check.” His hand floats over a selection of different screwdrivers, twitching to pick one. He shuts his eyes and dives in blind, picking one at random. “My crew, we had a guy. Jep. He was always tripping over himself, trying to make up his mind. ‘ _Ooh, that’s too dangerous, no, that’ll never work…_ ’” Franky grabs the new chain, fixture already attached to the ends, and lines it up with the launcher, putting a screw in place. “He drove us nuts. But he hadn’t been there doubtin’ all the time, we woulda got busted more than once.”

“Well…” Usopp says, weakly. “It’s not really the same. I mean, I _left._ ”

“Yeah, that was dumb. But you had your reasons. You were hurting. Wasn’t like you were serious about it.”

“I was serious!” 

“Nah. I saw you running around in that stupid mask. You took the first train goin’ back to your crew.”

“Yeah, but— that was later. Before, you said I should join you, and I… like, I thought about it. I really thought about it. Not just about that, but being something else generally.”

“Yeah. ‘Cause you had the option, and you didn’t know where to go. You’d be an idiot not to think about what you’re doing with your life, whether that’s chucking yourself into the first thing that comes along, or being stubborn and stickin’ to some old fantasy that don’t make sense for you anymore. So you thought about your options. Weighed ‘em up.”

“Well… yeah.” 

“But you said no, in the end. You realised you could do somethin’ else if you wanted to, and you wanted to, but you still chose to be a pirate.”

“Yeah.”

“So... you’re a pirate.”

“...Yeah.” 

* * *

“Usopp.”

It’s Sanji. He walks the length of the deck, tapping a cigarette out of a box against the back of his hand, lifting it to his mouth, lighting it, all in one fluid chain of motions. Usopp watches him over his shoulder, face impassive. Sanji moves with a grace and quiet confidence that Usopp’s never really been able to understand, and watching him is always a double edged sword; a cold war between the part of Usopp that wants to admire him, and the small, ugly part of Usopp lodged somewhere deep inside his core that seeps jealousy into all the cracks, poisoning everything, planting seeds of resentment that have to be pruned. Like weeds. 

“I wanted to talk to you,” Sanji says, standing beside Usopp and mirroring his position, resting his elbows against the deck railings to look out to sea, and the tiny silhouette of Water 7 behind them. 

“What’s up?”

Sanji doesn’t respond immediately, glancing down at his hands, taking a drag and exhaling; the smoke is whisked away by the wind. 

“I wanted to say sorry.”

Usopp scoffs, looking away. “For what? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I don’t know. For not believing you about the klabautermann. For not going after you when you left. I know you wanted someone to.”

“I’d made my decision. It’s hardly your fault.”

“Yeah, well. I know you.”

Usopp’s quiet.

“And I know you didn’t leave because you wanted to be alone. You left because you wanted someone to follow you, and make you come back home. You wanted us to prove we really wanted you with us, and we didn’t work it out in time, but by then it was too late to go back. Right?”

“I left,” Usopp says slowly, “Because I was angry about Luffy abandoning Merry.”

Sanji just hums, and exhales a puff of smoke. “You’re being stubborn again.”

Usopp doesn’t say anything. Sanji’s right, obviously. Sanji’s always right.

“Yeah, well,” he mutters after a moment. “What kind of shitty, insecure friend would I have to be, to make my friends jump through hoops to prove that they care about me, when it’s obvious?”

Sanji looks at him, infinitely patient. Usopp can’t keep up the eye contact for long, and breaks it off.

“Was it obvious?”

Usopp shrugs. “Well… yeah. Probably. I can’t remember.”

“Okay. Well, even if it was.” Sanji takes another drag. “It’s not your fault if you couldn’t see that.” 

“I can see it. I’m not an idiot. I don’t think that little of you guys.” 

“Didn’t say you did. But I think you think that little of yourself, and that’s why you acted out, and I know you wouldn’t have if you felt like we were there for you.” 

“I know you guys are there for me. But even if I didn’t,” Usopp says evenly, “My feelings aren’t your fault. It’s not like you’re bad friends.” He pauses, fidgeting, and looks down. “I’m just… like this,” he says then, more quietly.

“I know,” Sanji says softly. “I’m just saying that’s it’s okay if you need a reminder now and then. You can talk to us. You don’t have to feel ashamed.”

Usopp is quiet, though his hands ball into fists. He digs his nails into his palms to try and relieve the tension, and hopes Sanji doesn’t notice his knees are shaking. 

“Okay,” he says, swallowing, and gives a grateful nod. “...Thanks.” 

Sanji nods and looks back out at sea, pausing to ash his cigarette over the edge. Usopp watches his hands for just a moment, then looks back at his own; at the small, crescent-moon dents in his palms. He doesn’t know how to feel. He doesn’t deserve a friend like Sanji, he thinks, but at the same time, he knows Sanji doesn’t want him to feel that way. This is a route his thoughts often take, one where Usopp’s feelings start to argue with how he knows he _should_ feel, and he has to find a distraction quickly before he physically collapses in on himself from the internal conflict.

Sanji, with perfect timing as always, interrupts his spiral. 

“I wouldn’t have left you behind, you know. None of us would have. We would have gone back for you, no matter what.”

Usopp doesn’t say anything, looking down. It’s been two nights now since he came back to the crew, two nights since they left Water 7, and he’s had nightmares about that moment each night. It’s the same dream, both times. 

The ship is leaving, a small and distant silhouette on the horizon, and he’s on the cliff again. The one on the outskirts of Syrup Village, the one with the little patch of dirt under the tree, where the grass had eroded from how often he would sit there. The cliff is starting to collapse, chunks of it breaking off and falling into the ocean miles below him, and there is nothing on the island behind him. Only the collapsing cliff, the sea, and the boat on the horizon. There is a password to get onto the boat, and Usopp knows he only has to say it and he’ll be saved — but in the dream, he doesn’t have a voice. Both nights, the dream ended in the same way; the ship disappears. _Come back,_ Usopp tries to shout. _I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please come back._ It never does.

“Even if I hadn’t apologised?”

“Would you not have, if you had a choice?”

“Of course I would’ve.” 

“Then does it matter?”

Usopp shrugs. “You might not have heard me. I might have waited a second too long. I could’ve had a sore throat, or—”

“Yes,” Sanji says, smiling. “Yes, of course we would have.”

“Okay,” Usopp says, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Well. Good to know.” 

“We should probably have had that conversation earlier, though,” Sanji muses.

“Because I’m too proud, and a liar, and it takes me ages to work up the nerve to say anything honest?”

Sanji smirks, then, and lightly knocks Usopp on the head. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Despite himself, Usopp smiles back. Sanji flicks his cigarette butt into the sea and stretches, cracking his shoulders. “I’m gonna go make breakfast,” he says, turning back to the quarter deck. Then he pauses just as he’s about to open the door, and glances over his shoulder. “You wanna help?”

Usopp’s stunned silent for a moment, then nods, running after him. 

* * *

Over the next few weeks, Usopp’s visits to the workshop become regular, and more genuine. Less because he’s avoiding the crew, than because he actually wants to be there. He watches Franky work, or he works on his own inventions, and sometimes Franky stops what he’s doing because Usopp turns out to have some really good ideas. Good ideas, often executed terribly. 

So he starts to correct him, or offer advice where he can, and suddenly they find themselves settled into a pattern. The Franky Family was gone, but somehow, Usopp had managed to find himself under Franky’s wing anyway. 

And Usopp is, to Franky’s surprise, a good student. The best he’s ever had, actually. He’s attentive, he listens, he learns fast; most surprisingly of all, he doesn’t take criticism hard. Normally Usopp is quick to give up and happy to talk himself down any way he can if it means avoiding responsibility, his shoulders hunched and his eyes aimed at the floor— but not when he’s making things. When something doesn’t work, Usopp can stay focused for hours until he’s found a solution; more than once he’s managed to get a use out of something Franky had written off as scrap, if just to prove him wrong. His stubbornness was a force to be reckoned with in the workshop— but unlike it had been with Merry, that day he’d tried desperately to fix her broken wing with shaking shoulders and bleeding hands, here he was bright-eyed and hopeful, optimistic, always looking for a way around a problem. Not out of fear of failure, but a spark of perseverance that couldn’t be extinguished. 

For a man who had spent a decade-some destroying broken things for a living, Franky found this both inspiring and hard to watch. He’s had dreams, some nights, when they both fall asleep in the workshop; dreams about the ships he’s dismantled. He wonders if any of those ships had been loved like Merry was, if they too had manifested klabautermann; if, unlike her, any of them could’ve been saved. But other times, he thinks about the salvage, the repurposed iron and antique rudders that he took off and sold; how they might have been rebuilt into something new, carrying with them the memories of wherever they had been before. It’s painful and beautiful in its own right. 

So it’s fair to say that, unknowingly, Usopp is teaching him some things, too, which Franky has always found to be the best aspect he could hope for in any of his pupils. 

Sometimes Usopp tackles certain technical issues in the most unorthodox ways if he’s not otherwise directed, to the point where Franky has to watch him like a hawk to catch these moments of home-spun method, or else he won’t catch them until the ship lets him know a month later when it starts to collapse. It’s those times when it glares Franky in the face how little education Usopp has actually had, and he has to stop his usual reaction (annoyance, disappointment in a pupil taking shortcuts) because he remembers that Usopp had never been taught otherwise; he’d learned by trial and error, by making thousands on thousands of little mistakes, until he found a solution that seemed to work well enough; iron patches on a cracked mast to hold it together, unaware that there was rot in the wood all the way down the centre. So structurally, if Franky isn’t watching Usopp’s every move, it’s a recipe for disaster. But sometimes, very occasionally — especially when it came to details — Franky has found that just as he’s about to stop Usopp from using one type of joint, or wasting time with some unnecessary filing, he realises that Usopp’s bizarre self-taught methods actually work better than something Franky learned from years in the trade. Sometimes when this happens he’ll sit baffled as Usopp works, holding back his corrections, and attempt the same thing himself long after Usopp has fallen asleep to test it out. Those small moments, little gems of true invention in a sea of failure and lack of knowledge, give Franky a renewed respect for Usopp, for the things he managed to achieve completely and utterly on his own. Though other times, he makes blunders that seem so devastatingly obvious to Franky, and electrocutes himself or almost takes his own finger off with a drill, and Franky has to catch the words before they leave his mouth: _Didn’t your father ever teach you to—_ because, of course, he hadn’t.

Usopp has forgiven Franky for Water 7, that much had been clear since that day in the dock. It had taken Franky a while to catch up, though when he thinks about Usopp’s father and how the boy talks about him, he takes some comfort in the knowledge that Usopp is probably the most forgiving person he has ever met. Not that it’s necessarily a good thing, because there are times when Franky wants to yell it down Usopp’s throat: _hate someone other than yourself once in a while!_ Franky has decades of bitterness lodged inside him like bullets, he knows, but in this sentiment at least he feels like he’s right. 

But Usopp is stubborn as a ram, and despite Franky’s best efforts, the bitterness doesn’t rub off on him. Franky has seen enough bad in the world to be jaded, and Usopp comparatively hasn’t— but Usopp had also been hit square in the face with every ounce of badness that Franky had inside him, every little crystal of resentment he had against the world that had hurt him and the people he loved, anger grown slowly over the years in that godforsaken city, taken out brutally and mercilessly against a defenseless kid who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and still Usopp didn’t resent him for a moment. He adored him. He fell over his feet in awe at every little thing Franky did, and sometimes— especially at the beginning— it had made Franky feel sick, genuinely sick to his stomach with self-loathing. Day by day, that feeling had lessened. Usopp had seen Franky at his worst and thought of him at his best, and whether he knew it or not, he had saved Franky from whatever self-destructive course he’d been careening down before the Straw-Hats landed in Water 7. And though Franky doesn’t think much of what he’d offered Usopp on their second meeting, beyond a normal level of sympathy that anyone should have on hearing his story, Usopp seems to think Franky saved him in the same way. And Franky isn’t selfless enough to pretend that unwavering belief in him doesn’t make him feel worth something. 

So he reasons it’s only fair that to repay the boy who crawled into his life bleeding and had believed in him being better until he was, Franky tries to do the same for him.

So he keeps the fragment of a promise that they never really made out loud, and Franky teaches Usopp to build ships. And they build ships. 


End file.
